


Tabula Rasa

by Sub_Rosa



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/F, Fantasy, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-16 19:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7281151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sub_Rosa/pseuds/Sub_Rosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Devon was supposed to kill the dragon. She was supposed to be casting an ordinary, temporary polymorph spell. And the dragon was supposed to be irredeemable.</p><p>But nothing turns out as simple as it seems, does it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by old /tg/writing prompts, as well as one too many games of Homebrew Dungeons and Dragons and Changeling: The Lost.
> 
> Not a true crossover.

Sheer, overwhelming _power_ surged through Devon, more than she had ever known before, setting her veins on metaphysical fire, bursting forth in shapes of scintillation and darkness and fey. It rained down on the dragon, obscuring it from view.  
  
It seemed that fortune favored the bold, after all.  
  
When the arcane maelstrom faded away, the dragon was gone. Silence reigned in the cavern of the dragon’s lair for several seconds, as Devon processed the sight.  
  
It seemed impossible, on the face of it. But it was true. Even if she hadn’t expected to get out of that battle alive, she _had_. She had _won_.  
  
“I DID IT!” Devon screamed, breaking the silence and echoing through the walls of the dragon’s cavern. “I DEFEATED THE DRAGON!”  
  
The grin didn’t leave her face for several seconds, even though she was concentrating just to stay on her feet.  
  
“‘She’ll never amount to anything,’ they said! ‘Just a menace,’ they said! Well, who’s laughing now? I defeated a great! Red! Dragon!”  
  
The nearly waist-deep coins underfoot began to shift and clink against each other, like the death rattle of the dragon-  
  
“I have some bad news for you.”  
  
A small shape was crawling out of one of the dragon’s footprints, accompanied by an equally small voice. Surprisingly pale-skinned, spattered with freckles, with shocking red curls and molten reddish-orange eyes. Also, completely naked.  
  
Then the shape leaped straight for Devon, toppling her over and pushing her down into the gold coins.  
  
“Because you thought wrong! No mere mortal could ever defeat _me_!” It proclaimed boldly.  
  
It was the dragon. Or at least, it had been. Devon had tried to transmute the dragon’s physical form, tried to reduce it’s might and put it in into a vulnerable shape. But she had been trying to turn it into something like an ooze, or a vermin, or an animal, and instead the spell had gone haywire - pinging off of something in the dragon and taking a different tack.  
  
Devon could impose a sort of order on her own magic, but it was always a bit wild underneath it all. Her magic always seemed to have it’s own agenda.  
  
Case in point: the polymorphed preteen girl sitting on top of her and trying to choke her out.  
  
“What!?”  
  
The dragon-girl was glaring at her with… well, if looks could kill (and they could, coming from dragons), then Devon should have been dead. And she wasn’t dead just yet.  
  
For a moment, the dragon looked down, glancing over herself.  
  
“Tell me, _worm_ , what magic did you use? No polymorph could have done this to the MIGHTY KYLAZASTA!”  
  
The situation was so ludicrous that Devon had to laugh. She just couldn’t take the dragon seriously, looking like it did.  
  
“Do you think I am humorous? Well then, die choking on your own breathless laughter!”  
  
“A-are you serious?” Devon sputtered.  
  
“YOU THINK I HAVE TIME FOR JOKES!?” The girl roared. “No, I will destroy you with my own two claws!”  
  
Devon just pushed the little girl off of her own form, dropping her into the pile of gold and then hesitating at the next step.  
  
“Stop!” Kylazasta screamed. “Face me, you coward! Accept your doom, accept your station in life!”  
  
Devon scratched the back of her head almost apprehensively, before sighing.  
  
“Just _sleep_.”  
  
The girl blinked, on-and-off-again for several moments.  
  
“You… you… what… what did you… do…”  
  
And then she tumbled into the coin, snoring like a log.  
  
Devon looked down at the dragon’s polymorphed, sleeping form.  
  
It should have been easy to kill her. It would be simple. But then again, Devon had spent too much time killing and running from monsters to remember how to kill people. And as she was, the dragon was just too human, even if she should have been unforgivable.  
  
Some distant and cruel part of Devon was screaming: _sure, she has the body of a little girl, but she’s much more dangerous than any ordinary little girl could be. You have to kill her._  
  
Another part of her, even more calculating than the last, was screaming too: _sure, she’s evil and killing her would eliminate evil from the world. But at the same time, she’s triggering your human empathy, and if you kill her you’ll only make it easier to ignore your empathy in the future. You value the perpetuation of your empathy into the future more than you value eliminating evil in the moment, so you should leave her alive._  
  
And a third part of her, completely removed from moral philosophizing, completely removed from rational thought and absorbed in rationalizations, was busy throwing a hissy fit: _you can’t kill her because killing is WRONG, and besides, you don’t even know how dangerous she’s going to be, you have to analyze the spell and see what you did and if she’s going to change back_ -  
  
That last part of herself was the quietest, and it had been that way for a very long time. But it didn’t need to be the loudest thought in her skull for it to be important to her.  
  
So Devon sighed, leaning down to brush a lock of the dragon’s brilliant red hair away.  
  
“Damn it, Devon, you soft fool.” She muttered to herself in the manner of the long-suffering old friend she’d always wished she could have had.

 

===

  
When Kylazasta awoke again, she was encased in cloth - either it was a questionable attempt to preserve her ‘modesty,’ or the cloth was meant to serve as bindings.  
  
She began twisting, trying to free herself from her cloth shell, and Devon stood up, hesitation screaming from her every pore.  
  
“Don’t you want those clothes, or anything?”  
  
“Don’t be _stupid_.” The polymorphed dragon hissed. “My naked flesh is _awe-inspiring_ , no matter what shape I take!”  
  
Devon raised an eyebrow, but the girl continued boasting.  
  
“You humans are so weak, not just in body but in mind! The fact that you care about the judgements of the senseless masses shows how disgustingly small you are!”  
  
Devon began cracking up again.  
  
“Forget it,” the sorcerer said, “forget I said anything.”  
  
“Why would I do something so foolish?” The dragon replied. “No, it would serve me well to remember your diminutive values.”  
  
_This ought to be good_ , Devon thought. “Diminutive?” She asked.  
  
“Yes, diminutive!” Kylazasta muttered smugly. “You wouldn’t even kill me!”  
  
Devon shrugged.  
  
“I can’t exactly kill you _now_.”  
  
“You soft _human_.” Kylazasta shot back, speaking her words like slurs. “Of course you can!”  
  
“Do you really want me to kill you?” Devon asked mildly. Kylazasta opened her mouth to respond, thought for a few moments, and then closed it with a small _click_. Finally, she narrowed her eyes.  
  
“You think to control me, then? What do you want, weakling?”  
  
Devon shrugged, sitting down again upon the cold floor of the dragon’s cavern.  
  
“I have half a mind to send you to Babel, you know.” She said, her eyes boring into Kylazasta’s own gaze. Kylazasta sneered.  
  
“You’re too puritanical to do your own dirty work, you mean. You want me pacified, but you don’t want to have to cast the mindrape spell yourself.”  
  
Devon shifted uncomfortably, affronted by the accusation but not denying it either.  
  
“You’re already pacified, Kylazasta.”  
  
Kylazasta ripped the clothes off completely, baring her teeth.  
  
“And you’re mistaken, human! You will learn to rue the day that you ever spoke my name!”  
  
Devon frowned.  
  
“Would you just _shut up?_ You’re a child!”  
  
“I doubt you could even _count_ as high as my age in years!” Kylazasta hissed.  
  
“I can count to two million, thank you very much.” Devon replied, her offense visible all over her face. “I would know, my schoolteachers always punished me with counting sheep.”  
  
Kylazasta sneered, and lacking an elegant retort, leapt up to claw Devon’s eyes out.  
  
Devon knocked her back into the ground, and then, to the surprise of both of them, Kylazasta screamed. Loudly.  
  
“You have no honor-” Kylazasta began through teary eyes and gritted teeth.  
  
“Neither do you!”  
  
“-overwhelming my senses with this soft flesh! When your curse ends, I will _end you!_ ”  
  
Devon looked appropriately guilty, but that didn’t stop her from crushing Kylazasta’s hopes anyways.  
  
“I don’t know if the curse will end on it’s own.”  
  
Kylazasta looked up, her eyes blazing. Metaphorically blazing, though she would have had it otherwise - all the pyromantic and necromantic spells of murder she knew were failing her. Her draconic magic was gone.  
  
“Explain!”  
  
“Well…” Devon trailed off. “I mean, I just tried to use a bog-standard baleful polymorph spell, but with your immense and innate magical resilience it should have been repulsed by now, which means that there must have been some kind of supernatural imprinting I overcame with-”  
  
“Use smaller words, mortal. You’ll get to the point quicker.”  
  
Devon shrugged. “The spell ran amok and it’s not going to reverse itself.”  
  
Kylazasta looked like she’d bitten into a lemon.  
  
Then she got up, taking note of her position in her cavern, and started walking away.  
  
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”  
  
“I doubt you’re going to cough up a dispel magic for me, so I’ll get it from someone else.” She said haughtily.  
  
“Okay, first of all, you’ve killed and eaten thirty people in the last month alone.” Devon protested. “So there’s no way I’m going to let you go just like that. Second of all, _how_ are you going to do that? There’s no magic-mart around, no megacities for miles, and you don’t have anything to buy that service with.”  
  
“I’ll pay with my gold.” Kylazasta muttered.  
  
“You mean the false gold you made with a shadow conjuration?” Devon deadpanned. “I saw through the illusion while you were out. You’re not exactly _rich_ , are you?”  
  
Kylazasta turned a vivid red, not like her once-crimson scales but like a tomato, looking away with a suppressed glimmer of shame in her eyes.  
  
It _was_ kind of a low blow, Devon realized a little too late. But the dragon just seemed to wilt.  
  
“Fine then.” She whispered. “So, what can I offer _you_ in exchange for reversing the spell?”  
  
It was almost pathetic, the look of absurd and abject humiliation and misery on the dragon’s face. It was suppressed well, as to be expected from a majestic dragonic intelligence, yet it was still there, visible in the facial muscles that the dragon wasn’t familiar with.  
  
But Devon just shook her head.  
  
“I… don’t know if I _can_ undo it.” She began. “But I think know someone who can.”  
  
And Kylazasta narrowed her eyes.  
  
“What do you want from me, for you to take me to them? I don’t have my wealth with me, but I know where to get it. I know who has it right now-”  
  
Devon shook her head again.  
  
“I didn’t come here for your money. I came here because even though it should have been someone else, I was the only one the people you’ve been terrorizing can count on. So I want you to make a promise.”  
  
“Go on.” The dragon grumbled.  
  
“When the spell breaks, don’t come back to this place. I know more than a few nice places in the Underdark, I know places where you can live and safely terrorize lesser beings all you want without hurting so many innocent people.”  
  
And so Kylazasta looked around the decrepit cavern, full of illusionary fool’s gold and not much else. It almost rankled, the idea of not hurting innocent people.  
  
And she didn’t trust the spellcaster any farther than she could throw her. But this place, this cavern?  
  
There was nothing for her here. Not anymore.  
  
So she nodded once, conceding to Devon’s plea while saving as much face as she could. “I never liked this place to begin with,” she said, lying through her teeth.  
  
And that was that, that was their uneasy accord. It was enough.

 

===

  
Devon sighed as Kylazasta continued to whine to herself.  
  
The dragon’s complaints were valid, in a sense, because the two of them had been on the trail for hours and the dragon was less than comfortable. But she had no-one to blame but herself.  
  
“If you’re getting sunburned, Kylazasta, then you shouldn’t have ruined all of the clothes I gave you.” Devon said, trying to pacify the dragon. Kylazasta just scoffed, of course.  
  
“I wouldn’t have to wear your human clothes if you hadn’t made me into a human.” She hissed. “And don’t tell me that you don’t have more clothing. You’re a wizard, you could magic some up if you wanted.”  
  
Devon ignored the first comment, of course, because it went without saying. But her nose wrinkled at the second.  
  
“I’m a sorcerer, thank you very much. And I’m not particularly inclined to use my magic to fix a problem that _you_ created.”  
  
At that, Kylazasta seemed visibly affronted, and came to a stop for several moments.  
  
“Of _course_ the stupid human is just a sorcerer.” She muttered reproachfully to herself. “How could I have ever thought otherwise?”  
  
Devon raised an eyebrow, but Kylazasta didn’t see it, because she was flagging behind.  
  
“Do you have something against sorcerers, then? Aren’t dragons sorcerers?”  
  
“You know _nothing_ , human.” Kylazasta said imperiously, a stark contrast to her nearly-nude and childlike form. “Don’t you _dare_ compare your power to mine. We may both be sorcerers, but you disgust me. Your _power_ disgusts me. Your claim to it disgusts me.”  
  
Devon laughed, looking upward to track the movement of the sun across the sky and raising a hand to brush a lock of her brown hair aside.  
  
“Now, I think that’s rather uncalled for.” She mused.  
  
Kylazasta was quiet, almost ashamed of her outburst. But she wasn’t ashamed, because being ashamed of her own anger was an alien idea to her. To her, there was no shame in being who she was, in being quick to rage, quick to kill.  
  
Devon continued thinking, though, trekking through the underfoot grass and beginning a transition into the woods which lay between Kylazasta’s cavern and the nearest town.  
  
“You think I have no claim to my power?” She asked quietly.  
  
“You’re still so stupid.” Kylazasta replied simply, looking down and tentatively wiggling her toes in the grass. “Of course you have a claim to your power. You have your power, after all. It’s that simple.”  
  
“But you don’t like that I have it?” Devon asked speculatively, probing.  
  
Kylazasta didn’t reply.  
  
“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t get my powers from some ancestral draconic dalliance.” Devon said lightly.  
  
“It doesn’t.” Kylazasta replied. “You’re still just as stupid as ever.”  
  
Devon smiled.  
  
“And why won’t you teleport, sorcerer? We could be where I need to go in a matter of minutes.”  
  
“Trust me on this one, Kylazasta. I’m no good with magical travel. It’s just not worth it, you see?”  
  
Kylazasta sneered.  
  
“First of all, you won’t call me that ever again. You’re going to refer to me as KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE.”  
  
Devon sniggered, too quiet for Kylazasta to hear.  
  
“Second of all, you’re a terrible liar. You just don’t know how to teleport, do you?”  
  
“I _can_ teleport, I just choose not to. It’s too dangerous for me.”  
  
“Then prove it!” Kylazasta roared.  
  
“I don’t care if you don’t believe me, though.” Devon said, not unkindly.  
  
Kylazasta screeched with rage, leaping up to grab Devon’s back and thrashing around like some perversion of a piggyback rider.  
  
“Are you done yet, Kylazasta?”  
  
“I told you, you are to call me KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!”

 

===

  
And that was about how their journey went, interrupted only by an incident with an upturned tree root that Kylazasta would rather remain forgotten.  
  
So Devon, garbed in the same dark green and grey that she’d worn for years, trundled into town accompanied by Kylazasta - who was wearing a temporarily-conjured sackcloth because she could hardly have walked into town naked.  
  
She had pushed for Devon to give her an opulent robe, of course. And she was still scratching at the scrape she’d gotten along the way of their two-day trek, a scrape which had nothing to do with a lack of coordination and which had nothing to do with tree roots.  
  
Obviously.  
  
“Stupid sorcerer. Doesn’t even know healing magic.”  
  
Devon nodded once to the gatekeeper who guarded the walls around the town, before turning back to Kylazasta.  
  
“Now, that’s not fair. Did _you_ know healing magic?”  
  
Kylazasta hissed at another reminder of the power she’d lost. “Of course I did! I was a mighty spellcaster! I could heal myself from a single cell!”  
  
“And I very much doubt that.”  
  
Kylazasta was about to retort, when Devon whipped her hand out and clapped it over the dragon-girl’s mouth.  
  
“Hold on, we've got company.” She whispered, weaving a cantrip of quiet even as Kylazasta writhed in Devon’s grip. Then, with Kylazasta’s compliance assured, she raised her voice. “Ah! Mayor Amos! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon!”  
  
The Mayor of Littner town waddled over, anxiousness etched into every line of his face and every pore of his skin.  
  
“Is the dragon dead?” Was the first thing he said, worry in his voice. His eyes passed completely over Kylazasta’s red-haired form and locked onto Devon.  
  
Kylazasta smacked Devon’s hand away, muttering and fuming only for utter silence to emerge from her mouth. Devon shuffled awkwardly, before regaining her confidence and poise.  
  
“Don’t worry, Mayor Amos, your problem is solved. You won’t ever have to deal with the dragon ever again.”  
  
Kylazasta, finding no other option to express herself, took to poking Devon in the side (and then in the butt) repeatedly at the same time as she mouthed voiceless curses.  
  
“Oh, thank the Five.” Amos sighed. “I don’t know _how_ we can repay you-”  
  
“It’s fine!” Devon protested. Kylazasta’s poking increased in intensity, before finally letting up.  
  
“No, really, you’ve done more than we can ever thank you for.” Amos insisted. “That dragon single-handedly destroyed so much-”  
  
“I said it’s fine!” Devon muttered, caught on the spot. “Ah, I’m happy to help!”  
  
Amos finally got the message, nodding so hard that his jowls wobbled from side to side.  
  
“Really, if there’s any way we can repay you. Just tell us.”  
  
Devon grit her teeth. “Well, if you could tell me where the nearest clothing store is…”  
  
Amos nodded. “For the girl?”  
  
“Yeah.” Devon said. “You see, I… picked her up out in the wild. An orphan, you see. So sad.”  
  
Amos frowned with sympathy. “She definitely looked the part. Another victim of the dragon?”  
  
“I… yes, that’s exactly what happened.” Devon said, before pausing. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘looked’ the part? Past tense?”  
  
Amos nodded to Devon’s side, where Kylazasta was completely absent.  
  
“Can hardly see her now, can I? She ran off just a moment ago.”  
  
Devon screamed with fright.  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry, Amos, I… I have somewhere I need to be. Prior engagements, you see. I’ll have to go!”  
  
And then she turned and ran.  
  
“Kylazasta!”  
  
For a second, Devon thought that Kylazasta had run away completely, but then her small voice emerged from the distance, almost completely muted by echoes and Devon’s silencing spell.  
  
“Kylazasta the Great and Terrible!”

 

===

  
When Devon finally found Kylazasta, she was seated in front of a street musician, tapping one of her bare feet to the tune.  
  
“You really shouldn’t wander off like that!” Devon scolded. “I don’t care _how_ good the music is-”  
  
Kylazasta sneered, an expression which Devon was growing quite acquainted with. “And I _told you_ to stop being stupid. Don’t boss me around again, and get it through your head: I don’t care about the music. I care about the money.”  
  
A lute case was open on the ground, full of coin from the numerous passerby who had tipped the musician. At her words, he frowned and dropped his lute into the case before closing it up, picking it up, and walked away.  
  
“Coward!” Kylazasta spat at his retreating figure.  
  
“He’s not a coward just because he doesn’t want you to take his stuff.” Devon pointed out gently.  
  
“If he doesn’t want me to take his stuff, then he should kill me.” She grumbled.  
  
“That’s disproportionate, don’t you think?”  
  
“It’s how I’ve always dealt with people who try to take my stuff.” Kylazasta eventually said.  
  
“What stuff, exactly?”  
  
Kylazasta turned away from the street corner where the musician had been performing and steamrolled straight over Devon’s words. “Come on, let’s just get this over with. You want me to get some clothes, don’t you?”  
  
“Well, yes-”  
  
“So tell me where to get them, mortal!”  
  
Devon pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket, consulting it briefly.  
  
“Down the street, thataway.”  
  
“Then follow after me, whelp.”  
  
And Devon did, holding back a smirk all the while.


	2. Chapter 2

“Do you really expect me to wear this?” Kylazasta asked imperiously, holding up a fine plush-pink dress. Devon rolled her eyes.  
  
“Didn’t you say you wanted ‘clothing fit for a lord over men’?”  
  
“Well of course I did!” Kylazasta yelled. “But do you think this is fit for a lord over men!? This is what a frilly little frou-frou girly human girl would wear! Disgusting!”  
  
Devon hummed to herself, before grinning just a little _too_ savagely, like a wolf or thorn-toothed boogeyman (boogeywoman?) in human skin. “Well, the fact that you care about the judgements of the senseless masses shows how disgustingly small you are.”  
  
“Don’t you dare turn my words against me, fool!” Kylazasta protested. “These are the clothes of soft men, living fat in their towers! I want the garb of a mighty conquering monster! Armor, weapons, trophies of battle!”  
  
“You wouldn’t know how to wear human armor or wield human weapons even if you were presented with them.” Devon pointed out. “And you ate all of your trophies, didn’t you?”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
Devon shrugged, pulling a much plainer dress off of one of the racks of the shop.  
  
“How about this? Go for an understated conqueror look. Like an infiltrator, seeking to undermine the lands of men from within.”  
  
Kylazasta examined the white dress for several moments.  
  
“You think to manipulate me, lowly creature? You’re not the first to try your human psychology tricks against me. I’m a dragon, not a doppelganger.”  
  
Devon smirked, following the path of Kylazasta’s gaze as it trailed across the white cloth.  
  
“You do like this dress, though, don’t you?”  
  
“I said, _shut up_.”  
  
“Come on, Kylazasta, at least try it on? You won’t know how you feel about it if you just judge a book by it’s cover.”  
  
Kylazasta acquiesced, ripping the dress out of Devon’s hands with a snarl.  
  
“That’s KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE, to you. And if you expect me to wear this cheap substandard thing, you have to give me some jewelry too. I need _something_ valuable to hoard, even if I can’t sleep on it anymore.”  
  
“Jewelry, huh?” Devon asked with a bittersweet smile. She seemed to be looking off into the distance, at some memory that only she could discern. “Anything for my great and terrible queen.”  
  
Kylazasta sniffed sharply.  
  
“I’m a dragon, not a queen. Can you get anything right, mortal?”  
  
“Yeah, a dragon.” Devon said distractedly, looking out of the store window before turning back to Kylazasta and giving her full attention. “Will I get to pick the type of stone out, at least?”  
  
“You’d better make it - ugh, make it good!” Kylazasta muttered… even as she was trying to pull the white dress on. Trying and failing, at least.  
  
“You’re supposed to go to the changing room for that, you know. And here, let me help-”  
  
Kylazasta slapped Devon’s hand away. “I don’t need help from _you_!”  
  
“Kylazasta, you’re trying to fit your entire body through the left sleeve. You need help.”  
  
Kylazasta paused.  
  
“Call me Kylazasta the Great and Terrible and I might consider accepting your help, my servant.”  
  
“Okay, Kylazasta the Great and Terrible.” Devon said, finally humoring the dragon. “Hold on, give me a moment-”  
  
The dress tore in half with Kylazasta’s writhing movements, and the owner of the clothes shop - who was already shooting dark looks at the odd couple - began frothing at the mouth.  
  
“You _are_ going to pay for that, yes?” He choked out through gritted teeth.  
  
Devon and Kylazasta briefly glanced at each other.  
  
“I never liked this dress anyway.” Kylazasta said, lying through her teeth. “You pay for it.”  
  
Devon just sighed and pulled a satchel of coin out of her pocket.  


===

  
“Where _are_ we going, sorceror? You still haven’t told me.”  
  
Devon rolled her eyes, turning back to her compatriot on the road as they trekked out of Littner town. Kylazasta was decked from head to toe in gaudy faux-silk and wearing dozens of polished pebbles.  
  
“Just an old paladin friend of mine. Great curse-breaker.”  
  
Kylazasta snorted.  
  
“A _paladin_? Why would one of them go along with this scheme of yours? I barely even believe that _you_ came up with this plan.”  
  
“It’s not a plan, exactly.” Devon rebuked, watching as the green leaves of spring were stripped from nearby trees by the battering winds over their heads. “You make it sound so sinister and malevolent.”  
  
“You’re the one who’s letting the red dragon stay alive.” Kylazasta replied not-so-evenly.  
  
“That’s not malevolence, that’s empathy. And if my paladin friend disagrees - she probably will disagree - that’s too damn bad because she owes me quite a few favors.”  
  
“Oh?” Kylazasta asked. “That sounds like an interesting story. Regale me, mortal.”  
  
“It’s a grown-up story, sorry.” Devon said flippantly. “Not appropriate for little girls like you.”  
  
“How dare you call me little!” Kylazasta screamed. “I am KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!”  
  
“Yes. Kylazasta the Great and Terrible Little Girl.”  
  
Kylazasta growled, but had already learned that she had no chance in hell of killing Devon for retribution.  
  
Yet.  
  
“You _do_ remember that I’m a dragon, don’t you? Or are you too stupid to know even that?”  
  
Devon didn’t seem overly concerned as she continued to blaze the trail ahead, but she was still rather chagrined.  
  
“You’re right. I’m sorry. You _are_ a dragon, even if you’re… displaced.”  
  
If anything, that seemed to piss Kylazasta off even more.  
  
“You’re so damnably _soft_ , human. Why do you care so much? Why are you so _weak_?”  
  
Both of them knew that Devon was anything but weak, but they both knew that Kylazasta was talking about a different sort of ‘weakness’ either way.  
  
“Who wouldn’t care?” Devon asked gently. “You’ve been ripped away from everything you’ve ever known and transformed utterly. Who wouldn’t feel sympathy?”  
  
“But I’m still a dragon.” “Kylazasta replied. “Humans aren’t sympathetic to us dragons, they’re rightfully terrified of us.”  
  
Their footsteps beat a steady crackling into the leaves underfoot.  
  
“Well, I’m not exactly an ordinary human, Kylazasta.”  
  
“Don’t patronize me.” She grumbled. “And it’s Kylazasta the Great and Terrible.”  
  
Devon chuckled, reaching up to pluck a leaf out of her hair, deposited by the wind.  
  
It was a deep, rich red, the color of blood and autumn and the color of the scales that Kylazasta no longer had. For a moment, Devon looked at it as she held it between her fingers, then she cast it aside, letting it drop into the underfoot grass.  
  
By the time it hit the ground, it was withered and dead, like the leaves of a winter long since passed.  
  
“Come on, Kylazasta the Great and Terrible. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if we want to get to a good camping site.”  
  
“As if any camping site is a good camping site.” Kylazasta muttered. “How do you humans sleep properly, with your stupid, gangly bipedal bodies?”  
  
“You could watch what I do.” Devon suggested lightly. “I sleep on my back or on my side. It’s not that hard.”  
  
Kylazasta laughed.  
  
“As if I would ever take suggestions from _you_. I _hate_ you, sorceror.”  
  
Devon didn’t respond for several seconds as she tried to get her thoughts in order and find a response which wouldn’t escalate.  
  
“Do you really?”  
  
“Of course!” Kylazasta answered spitefully. “You ripped me away from e-everything I’ve ever known and transformed me. How could I _not_ hate you?”  
  
The both of them pretended that they didn’t notice the weakness - the tremor and stutter - in Kylazasta’s voice.  
  
"Yeah." Devon finally replied. "I suppose I know what you mean."


	3. Chapter 3

“Admit it, mortal mage, you’re lost. We’ve been going in circles for the past hour.”  
  
“We are not lost.” Devon rebuked Kylazasta gently. “We’re just taking the long road.”  
  
“No.” Kylazasta replied. “You _are_ lost. You wouldn’t dare postpone our little ‘appointment’ with your paladin friend, would you? Just for the sake of your stupid sight-seeing?”  
  
“Sight-seeing isn’t that bad.” Devon said. “But of course, any answer I could give you would make you mad, wouldn’t it? You don’t want us to be lost, and you don’t want me to be taking you sight-seeing. So... hm… I think I won’t answer at all.”  
  
Kylazasta growled at the underlying note of smugness in Devon’s tone. “I hate you, human.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Devon wasn’t even offended.  
  
“I said, I _hate_ you!”  
  
“And I said that I _know_.” Devon reminded her, slipping through a patch of briars and brambles like she was dancing between raindrops. Kylazasta fared poorly in comparison.  
  
“Ah - OUCH! You stupid _humans_! I hate this! I should be eating this body for breakfast, not using it myself!”  
  
Devon laughed, finally giving into something - sitting down on a fallen log to consult the map which she kept in one of her pockets.  
  
“See! I _knew_ you were lost! Give me that map!”  
  
Kylazasta ripped the map out of Devon’s hands, nearly ripping the paper in half in the process. Devon cast a repair spell on instinct, and Kylazasta gave the glimmering magecraft an appraising look before turning back to the map.  
  
“You’re holding that upside down, you know.”  
  
“Shut up, fledgeling! I… I can read upside down! I’m KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!”  
  
Nonetheless, she still reoriented the map. Devon pretended that she didn’t notice.  
  
“Do you even know where we are on that map?”  
  
“Of course I do!” Kylazasta hissed. “Do _you?_ ”  
  
“No.” Devon said, unashamed of her ignorance. “That’s why I was asking you.”  
  
“Right, well…” Kylazasta muttered, trailing off as she realized she’d painted herself into a corner. “Fine! I don’t know either!”  
  
Devon looked away, putting a hand over her mouth to hide the smile which threatened to bare her teeth.  
  
“Okay, well, let’s fix that.” She said shortly. “How about we find a landmark?”  
  
“And how do you propose we do that, magus? You probably wouldn’t know a divination spell if it axed you in the face.”  
  
Devon shrugged and stood up, stretching out and groaning slightly. “I’m going to climb a tree.”  
  
“Climb… a tree?” Kylazasta asked, tilting her head to the side and sending Devon a poisonous (if curious) glare.  
  
“Climb a tree.” Devon confirmed, standing up and taking a running leap for one of the great pines which surrounded them.  
  
“You idiot!” Kylazasta shouted up at Devon’s ascending figure. “You’re going to fall! And break your neck! And then I’m going to be stuck in this _shitty_ human body for the rest of my short, shitty human life!”  
  
“No I won’t!” Devon responded cheerfully. “But I’m glad to hear that you care so much, Kylazasta.”  
  
Devon waited a beat, counting down in her head. _Three, two, one..._  
  
“KYLAZASTA THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE!” She cried out, exactly on cue. “And I don’t care! This is about me, you worm!”  
  
Devon didn’t reply, leaving Kylazasta to fume in her own misery.  
  
“Come on, human! You won’t ignore me!”  
  
Again, Devon didn’t reply. Kylazasta began pacing around the base of the tree, trying to make Devon out in the branches above.  
  
And then she was seized and lifted bodily into the air, her frame carefully navigated through the tree limbs.  
  
“YOU BASTARD HUMAN! PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT!”  
  
Her stomach churning slightly, she finally emerged from the treetops, coming to rest next to Devon on the tippy-top tree branches.  
  
“But I said that _we_ would be finding a landmark, didn’t we?” Devon pointed out, waving a hand still glowing with telekinetic magic. “And I figured that you wouldn’t be able to climb up on your own, so I lent a helping hand.”  
  
“I won’t thank you.” Kylazasta groused. “I could have done it on my own, sorceror.”  
  
“It’s Devon, for the record.” Devon noted dryly. “Come on, Kylazasta the Great and Terrible, do you see that mountain in the distance?”  
  
The polymorphed dragon seethed quietly. “I’m not blind, _human_ , and I won’t dirty my voice with your name. Of course I see the mountain.”  
  
Devon almost wanted to snap at the dragon, wanted to let some of her frustration with the dragon’s antics boil over, But then, she’d had a lot of practice dealing with people just as bad as Kylazasta, and with people even worse. She’d learned how to negotiate with unpredictable brats and tempestuous tyrants all in one long ago, just to survive. The bitter lessons of an extended youth she would rather forget.  
  
And something in Kylazasta’s expression took her words away, regardless.  
  
“Are you okay?” Devon asked slowly. Kylazasta’s molten eyes skimmed across the horizon, full of a longing that couldn’t be put into words.  
  
For the first time - that Devon could remember, at least - Kylazasta was almost subdued.  
  
“I’m fine, human.” Kylazasta said shortly.  
  
A bird passed overhead, squawking and chirping.  
  
“How long has it been, anyway?” She whispered. “Since I became like this.”  
  
_One and a half weeks on the road_ , Devon thought, adding up days in her head.  
  
“I don’t know.” She said out loud. Kylazasta hummed to herself, turning the response over in her mind before casting it aside. Even as she spoke, she still stared at the clouds with something almost like homesickness in her eyes.  
  
“Let’s stay up here a while, human. I need a rest from your slave-driving abomination of a travel schedule.”  
  
Devon smiled again, smug and gloating with the insight she was gleaning on Kylazasta’s idiosyncrasies. But it wasn’t a mean smile.  
  
“You know.” She began. “I don’t do teleports. Not ever. But I _might_ be convinced to arrange something else. I happen to know a few different ways to fly.”  
  
Kylazasta stiffened, gritting her teeth and whirling about with a snarl.  
  
“I don’t want to fly under your power, mage. I want my wings back, and you can’t give me that.”  
  
Devon was quiet, folding up the map she had been consulting.  
  
“And don’t give me your stupid, pathetic pity either, you stupid maggot.” Kylazasta growled, reaching up to wipe an eye and turning away to hide the motion.  
  
“We can take the rest of this trip on foot if that’s really what you want.” Devon said softly.  
  
The sun had inched half an hour across the sky by the time that Kylazasta replied.  
  
“I want to fly.” She admitted, almost naked in her intensity.  
  
And Devon smiled, reaching out to wreathe the both of them in a mantle of wax and gossamer wings.  
  
“Okay.”


	4. Chapter 4

The curving light of the moon was only barely visible through the slats of the window shade, casting a silver net of chain over the inn room where Devon and Kylazasta were cooped up for the night.

Devon had neglected to remove her clothing or even burrow under the covers, merely lying on top of the bed on her back and folding her arms up like a corpse in repose.

Kylazasta, all things considered, was probably still trying to sleep the dragon way - naked, on her belly, with limbs splayed out or held underneath her body. Like she was still a quadruped.

Of course, Devon wouldn’t know. Because the first thing she saw when she woke up was that Kylazasta was very much awake. And that Kylazasta was curling her hands around Devon’s throat, hissing and spitting like some viper. With the hot breath spilling from her lips to tickle Devon's nose, it was almost like Kylazasta was about to breathe fire again.

“F-foul mage!” Kylazasta whispered, uncharacteristically quiet. “What curse have you worked now?”

Devon blinked sleepily, crawling upwards out of Kylazasta’s perilous grip and towards the headboard.

“I didn’t do anything this time, Kylazasta.” She groaned, rubbing the dust of sleep and earth out of her eyes.

“You lie!” Kylazasta blustered. Or tried to bluster, before stifling a cough. “You cursed me, monkey! Fix it, now!”

“I said I didn’t curse you!” Devon shouted. A dull thump resounded from a nearby wall, the sound of another tenant looking to shut the odd couple up.

“Than what do you call this?” Kylazasta asked silkily. “This accursed pain and quietude in my voice?”

Devon cocked her head, lowering her voice to match Kylazasta’s own. “You mean you have a sore throat?”

“Explain.” Kylazasta commanded, as if she was still taller than a house. “Now.”

“Your throat is in pain? And it hurts to talk?”

Kylazasta nodded stiffly, like it was a sin to admit her weakness.

“That means you’re sick. It’s normal, it happens to everyone. You’ll be fine in the morning.”

The dragon’s face screwed up, before she finally let go of Devon’s neck, rolling over and collapsing in bed with her.

“Dragons don’t get sick.” She muttered testily, glaring at the ceiling as if it were to blame.

“Mmm.” Devon murmured noncommittally, turning to face Kylazasta - who was studiously avoiding eye contact. “Inside of a red dragon is hot enough to cook your average human alive. Too hot for normal diseases to survive and spread.”

Kylazasta sniffed primly. “And how would you know, human?”

“One of my parents told me, once.” Devon sighed. “He knew all kinds of things.”

The silver thread of the slats and the moon was pulled away by the cloud cover outside, and Devon was lost in another time, when the forests and wilds beckoned with beauty and meaning and majesty instead of the meaningless terror of forgotten things. When a child could look at her parents and feel safe, when the world was safe and evil and suffering were prohibited (prohibited by who?). When even unconditional love was unassailable, and a parent would never look at their child like she was a stranger.

Kylazasta reached up to clumsily rub at one of her eyes, adjusting to the dimness. “You’re so weak.” She whispered. “I never needed a parent to help me out.”

“Did you want one?” Devon asked, stretching out and sliding down the bed to rest her head on the pillow again.

“Absolutely not.” Kylazasta smiled bitterly, almost angrily. “I have enough family troubles as it is without my father and mother. No, silver dragons killed them off just after we hatched. Stupid, weak, merciful silvers. Couldn’t kill me, couldn’t kill my sisters. So they flaked off and left us to starve on our own rather than give us a quick death.”

Devon was quiet.

“I’m sorry.” She said, extending an arm out to offer reassurance before pulling it away, preemptively dodging a slap.

“Don’t be.” Kylazasta said, sitting up and turning away to jump out of bed. “Don’t want your pity. Doesn’t make a difference. Chromatic dragons don’t take care of our young anyways.”

Devon reached out again, concern flitting across her face. “If you’re sick then you really shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor-”

“I’m fine.” Kylazasta muttered, something bent up in the frame of her bare shoulders. “You said I would be fine in the morning.”

Devon raised an eyebrow. “And you trust me?”

“No.” Kylazasta said as she curled up on the floor. “But that’s the point, it’s not like I trust you enough to sleep in the same bed.”

“You were the one who said that we shouldn’t waste our money on a room with two beds!” Devon whispered, leaning over to mock-glare at Kylazasta.

“Shut up, human. You’re making my head hurt.”

Devon didn’t even bother with a witty retort.


	5. Chapter 5

  
The day had already begun it’s ferocious assault by the time Devon woke up, the sun drawing harsh and jagged lines of light across the walls, drilling molten glass into Devon’s wrists until she bled her heart out and driving nails of fire into her eyes until she couldn’t cry even if she wanted to.  
  
It took her a few moments to blink the blinding sunlight away, to get up and close the shades all the way and pretend, just for a few moments, that she had no responsibilities to the waking world. A sense of indecision, of vertigo and confusion, hung over her, and she couldn’t put her finger on why.  
  
 _Kylazasta_.  
  
Devon straightened her clothes out - the forest green turtleneck she never _ever_ removed, the black pants and patterned black-and-green coat she’d all pilfered from some sylvan noblewoman long ago - without even checking a mirror, in the ruts of a long-obsolete habit, before stepping around the bed which had shielded Kylazasta from the searing sunlight.  
  
“Hey. Kylazasta the Great and Terrible? You sleeping in?”  
  
The dragon rolled over, turning to Devon and opening a bleary eye with all the lucidity of frosted glass.  
  
“I’m not sleepin’.” She mumbled. “I’m just lyin’ down.”  
  
“Oh.” Devon said, accepting the explanation without comment even as she brushed a lock of sweaty hair away from Kylazasta’s (fever-scorched) forehead. “You didn’t wake me up this morning, so I wondered if something was wrong with you.”  
  
“Nothing wrong.” Kylazasta maintained, weakly pulling away from Devon’s hand. The human mage frowned. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Okay.” Devon said gently… before picking Kylazasta up bridal-style. “It’s easier to lie down in bed, though.”  
  
“Ugh.” Kylazasta groaned. “Don’t need _you_ to make it easy.”  
  
“True.” Devon offered. “But sometimes we get things that we don’t need.”  
  
“And sometimes we get things that we don’t want, either.” Kylazasta said, trying and failing to spit bile at Devon even as she tucked her in under the covers.  
  
“I _know_.” Devon said, and the simplicity of those two words said all that she knew how to say. “But we do _need_ food. I’m going to go get some from the dining hall, okay? I’ll just be a few minutes.”  
  
“Mhm. Stupid human food.” Kylazasta moaned, in the loopy delirium of a heavy sleeper. “Stupid humans. I hate you.”  
  
Devon had walked over to the door and had her hand on the handle before she turned back to Kylazasta.  
  
“No you don’t.” She said.  
  
And then she slid through the doorframe and she was gone.  


===

  
Devon and Kylazasta had stopped in Fuluuke city this time, already about halfway to their destination. It wasn’t a megacity - it wasn’t Nimrod’s Babel, or Alabaster’s Eden and Tsiyon, where God-Kings ruled as lords over men, where shadesteel crawled the streets, where telepaths watched from their towers - but it was certainly an advanced and industrialized place. That alone was evident in the kitchens that Devon could see, where powerful magical items were put to waste merely in the service of preparing and cooking food.  
  
“What strange works…” Devon muttered softly to herself, smiling slightly. “Of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at.”  
  
Fuluuke was probably going to evaporate as a settlement within a decade, as the spellcasters on the premises took themselves and their phenomenal cosmic power to a better place, unless it could reach critical mass and establish itself as a power in it’s own right. Either way, Devon would enjoy her stay.  
  
Especially with the coffee. They made damn good coffee. Devon poured herself another refill as she waited for the food to finish cooking, chugging it back. Almost too bitter, almost too burned, scalding enough to shock her out of her complacency and drag her kicking and screaming into being a responsible adult even though all she’d ever wanted was to be a kid again.  
  
“Hey, pass the pot, would you?”  
  
Devon slid the coffee pot across the table to her newest compatriot, someone who was _probably_ a dwarf. But it was hard to tell sometimes.  
  
“Go ahead and take it.”  
  
“Thank you.” The dwarf offered politely, before he screwed his eyes up. “Wait… were you the one making a racket last night? Room 202?”  
  
Devon winced. “Yeah, that might have been. Sorry for waking you up.”  
  
The dwarf shrugged this time, drinking straight from the coffee pot without pouring it out and letting it cool down. “S’alright. I saw the hellion you were carting around last night. What’s her story?”  
  
 _Oh, she’s a deadly red dragon transformed into a little girl._  
  
“Not much.” Devon said, not even bothering to outright lie. “Just an orphan I found in a cavern. Grew up all alone, as far as I can tell.”  
  
“Ah.” The dwarf said. “Feral child, then? There’s no coming back from that.”  
  
“Yeah.” Devon said faintly, distracted as she finished her last mug of coffee. “No coming back from that.”  


===

  
“Hey, I’m back.”  
  
Devon eased open the door with a spike of telekinesis, slipping sideways through the doorframe like leaves through branches and carrying a tray of food in her hands.  
  
“I brought you some tasteless gruel because you’re obviously still sick and it’s the healthiest option.” Devon said with a titter, sitting on the side of the bed and trying to tend to Kylazasta.  
  
“Fuck you, mage.” Kylazasta rasped, wet and harsh and sad, turning over and trying to dig further under the covers as if she could hide from her own illness.  
  
“But,” Devon continued. “I also brought you some greasy burned meat because I figure that I couldn’t get you to take care of yourself even with my blackest enchantments, and unhealthy food is better than none at all.”  
  
Kylazasta turned back around, grudgingly surprised, Her eyes were practically glued shut by sleep.  
  
“I’m not going to thank you.” She said, quashing a cough.  
  
“And I didn’t expect you to thank me.” Devon replied, picking up a spoon and beginning to dig into the gruel. “But I feel appreciated anyways.”  
  
Kylazasta leaned upwards, reaching over to grab a fistful of bacon.  
  
“You’re not appreciated, though.” She muttered. “You did this to me.”  
  
“I know.” Devon said.  
  
“I hate you.” Kylazasta muttered through a mouthful of grease, before stifling a cough.  
  
“No you don’t.” Devon said gently. Kylazasta paused… and then laughed.  
  
“No, I don’t.” She said sourly. “You’re right, I don’t. Stupid. I _should_ hate you. I don’t even hate that I don’t hate you. I should.”  
  
“I know.” Devon said. “I know.”  
  
Kylazasta looked at the rest of the food before sighing, flopping back into the bed.  
  
“I hate this. I hate being sick. I hate that I don’t even want to eat. I hate that I don’t hate that I don’t hate you.”  
  
“It’s going to be okay.” Devon whispered.  
  
“No it won’t.” Kylazasta choked out, her voice rough and broken like she was trying not to cry - because showing vulnerability would be disgusting to her.  
  
“Maybe not.” Devon replied, putting the gruel aside. Because she knew that there were no guarantees, there was no cosmic benevolence to intervene in the face of an unhappy ending. “But it can be.”  
  
“Mmm.” Kylazasta muttered, before sighing. “Give me that gruel.”  
  
Devon passed it over, reaching for the bacon herself.  


===

  
It was about two hours later, when Kylazasta had finished eating and tried to go back to sleep while Devon perused the light reading and distraction novels splattered over the walls and bookshelves, when Kylazasta finally spoke again.  
  
“I feel awful.” She said quietly. Devon looked up, not even bothering to mark her place in the book before she walked over to the polymorphed dragon and took stock.  
  
“You’re going to feel better soon.” She said, not brooking any disagreement. “You’re not in danger from the sickness, it just feels awful because you’ve never had one before.”  
  
“How would you know?” She rasped. “Are you a doctor? I feel like I’m going to die. Throat hurts so bad.”  
  
“You’re not going to die.” Devon reassured.  
  
“I don’t want to die…” Kylazasta whispered. “Don’t want to die.”  
  
Devon carefully took Kylazasta’s temperature - feverish but far from dangerously so - even as she felt Kylazasta’s neck. “You’re not going to die.”  
  
Devon struggled with herself for a moment, turning possibilities over in her mind. _It’s not like I can get sick anyways. Not anymore._  
  
So she pulled herself into bed too, lying down next to Devon and running a soothing hand through the girl’s red and curly hair.  
  
“You’re not going to die.”  
  
“Yes I will.” Kylazasta said, and the almost-but-not-quite-crying voice returned. “I’m just a stupid human. Gonna burn out like a candle. Won’t even make it past a century, not like this.”  
  
Devon looked vulnerable for once, although Kylazasta didn’t see it, not turned away as she was.  
  
“You’d be surprised at how long a human can live.” She said. “And you’d be surprised at how many things can be worse than death.”  
  
Too late, Devon realized how unhelpful her words were. Kylazasta sniffled.  
  
“I don’t want to die as a human.”  
  
“You won’t.” Devon promised, somewhat awkwardly. “I won’t let it happen.”  
  
And still, Kylazasta wasn’t assured. “Stupid. I don’t want to need you to protect me.”  
  
“You’re not gonna die.” Devon whispered. “And I’m going to protect you anyways.”  
  
For a second, Devon wondered how she’d gotten to where she was - swearing to protect a monster. Looking at it all from the outside, it all seemed so foolish and emotional.  
  
But she was on the inside. She’d always been on the inside.  
  
“It’s going to be okay.” Devon said. “I promise.”   



	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you feel the need to watch out for content/trigger warnings, then this chapter might not be your cup of tea, on the basis of a discussion about some seriously fucked-up stuff.

Kylazasta was gone by the time morning rolled around again, leaving Devon lost and alone to the mutilating light of the sun.  
  
Or not.  
  
“Am I to take your kitchen raid as a sign that you’re feeling better?” Devon asked, stepping over a shattered jar of jellied radishes only to grind her boot into a smeared apple.  
  
“Mmmm pfhn ymmm ymnnn!” Kylazasta mumbled around a mouthful of something which looked suspiciously red and bloody. It was probably a fruit though, given the cloying scent in the air.  
  
Probably.  
  
Devon rolled her eyes, throwing a napkin at the girl before starting to magic the kitchen clean. Kylazasta swallowed sloppily and noisily, deigning to scrub her face clean.  
  
“I thought you said that you didn’t like using magic to fix the messes that _I_ make?” Kylazasta asked bitterly, biting into yet another… pomegranate? It was probably a pomegranate.  
  
Probably.  
  
But Devon shrugged in response, reaching a finger into the high collar of her shirt to scratch at a an old itch.  
  
“I hardly want to leave this place on a bad note, do I? And if you’re determined to eat the entire pantry to celebrate and prove how hale and healthy you are now, I figure at the very least that we can clean up.”  
  
“Mmm.” Kylazasta acknowledged idly, biting into an enormous sausage along with a pickle… before choking. “Wait, _we!?_ ”  
  
“We.” Devon confirmed. “As in, you and me.”  
  
“But I’m still sick!” Kylazasta protested. “You can’t make me do this!”  
  
And Devon… chuckled.  
  
“My god, you really _are_ such a dragon. Come on, get up and grab the towels.”  
  
So Kylazasta did so, blushing and pleased all the while.  


===

  
“So you really are feeling better?” Devon asked as the two of them left Fuluuke behind to distance and memories. “No more throat pain?”  
  
“I’m fine.” Kylazasta proclaimed. “Give it a rest, I’m not a piece of glass.”  
  
“Yeah.” Devon said, because there was nothing else to say. “And emotionally? You were pretty torn up last night.”  
  
“If you talk about that again I’ll rip your tongue out.” Kylazasta replied smoothly.  
  
“Why?” Devon queried.  
  
“Because I don’t need or want your pity.”  
  
“But why?” Devon asked.  
  
“Because it doesn’t fix anything.” Kylazasta blustered.  
  
“Doesn’t it?” Devon asked. “Wouldn’t you have felt worse if I didn’t help you?”  
  
“That’s not the fucking problem!” Kylazasta said, finally snapping. “I wouldn’t have gotten sick if you didn’t fucking transform me to begin with! You did all of this to me! I hate this! I hate you!”  
  
“No you don’t.” Devon said sadly. “You hate that you don’t hate that you don’t hate this and me. I know what that’s like, to want things that you don’t want or want to want.”  
  
“I don’t want you to sympathize with me!” Kylazasta continued, stomping through an outcropping of bushes.  
  
“Yes you do. You just don’t want to want me to sympathize with you.” Devon explained.  
  
Kylazasta didn’t have an answer for that, pacing about like a dragon-girl possessed and rushing ahead - because she couldn’t bear to face Devon.  
  
“And what in the nine hells would you know about this? About me and what I want!?” Kylazasta hissed, the affront building in her guts and spilling out like poison.  
  
“Because I’ve been in the same position as you.” Devon responded, the pace of her gait slowing to a glacial crawl as if to beckon Kylazasta back.  
  
“As if a sorcerer like you would ever be laid so low!” Kylazasta scoffed. “Fuck you, and fuck your lies!”  
  
“You know I wasn’t always a sorcerer, right?” Devon asked, her tone somber and melancholy, bitter with the fruits of unforgettable things.  
  
“And what does that mean?” Kylazasta asked sharply, completely ignoring Devon’s rumination. The older sorcerer seemed to age a millennia in the span of a moment, leaning against a tree like her legs would give out at any moment.  
  
Kylazasta didn’t turn around until her question went unanswered after a dozen seconds, and until she noticed that the sound of her footsteps went unaccompanied.  
  
“There was a woman, once.” Devon began hesitantly, clumsily. “Although I hesitate to say they were a woman because they wore a body even younger than you have. And I hesitate to say that they were a girl, because they were older than the both of us combined. And I hesitate to even call them a person, because they were so far from the idea of personhood that I could almost laugh. But… she wanted something, I guess. I think she wanted novelty.”  
  
Kylazasta seemed honestly taken aback for once, but in truth she was deciding how best to chew Devon out at the end of her monologue.  
  
“So she took me. Took me from everything I’d ever known and transformed me. She tried to make me like her-”  
  
**_And I succeeded more than you’d like to admit, didn’t I?_**  
  
“-and the twisted thing is, I almost wanted her to succeed.” Devon trailed off, lost in thoughts of a world stitched together by snow and rain and contracts and mirrors. “She made me want it.”  
  
**_It’s okay, I know you don’t want this yet. But you will. I can show you things and ways to be that you’ve never even dreamed. And even if you don’t want it, well, that doesn’t matter, does it?_**  
  
“I had to steal some of their magic just to escape. That’s why I can barely control my power; it was never meant for me to begin with. And I guess I’ve been running ever since.”  
  
**_You haven’t been running because you actually think I’ll come back for you. You’ve been running because you don’t even know how to relate to humans anymore. You’re too much like me, like_ us _._**  
  
“So what did you do?” Kylazasta asked, her curiosity verging on spite and butting up against her own grief.  
  
Devon pulled away from the tree, catching up with the polymorphed dragon.  
  
“I wanted to want to be human, in the end, so I learned how to be human again. If your mind is becoming something that you don’t want it to be, well… you have to learn how to be what you want to be.”  
  
Kylazasta cocked her head.  
  
“You realize that you’re telling me to be a mean, evil dragon, right? Is that what you want on your conscience?”  
  
“I didn’t realize you cared about my conscience.” Devon mused. “But if being a mean evil dragon is really what means the most to you, then I don’t think I could hold you back. I’m too sentimental, too sympathetic, too weak, as you would say.”  
  
“I don’t care about your conscience.” Kylazasta blustered. “I’m not weak!”  
  
“Of course you’re not weak.” Devon said. “You’ve had your powers torn away from you, been stripped of your agency, and you can still walk around like you’re larger than life. You still do everything you can to choose the life that means the most to you. You’re not weak.”  
  
**_Not as weak as you were, you mean to say._**  
  
“Gee, thanks.” Kylazasta muttered as if she didn’t care at all. But still, she smiled a little.  
  
**_But that’s okay. I don’t care if you’re weak, or if you stabbed me in the back and ran away. I still love you, my sweet._**  
  
“Do you want me to eat that bitch for you?” Kylazasta asked. “The one who transformed you?”  
  
“No.” Devon responded. “She’s not the kind of person who would taste very good anyways. Don’t want to get bad breath.”  
  
**_I suppose_ you _would know, after all._**  
  
“Besides,” Devon concluded. “That part of my life is over. I don’t need to dwell on it.”  
  
**_You’re not dwelling on it, because you know that I love you too much. I’m not even going to look for a replacement, not even going to take more children. Not going to make you feel guilty for anything. You think that the longer you stay away, the longer I’ll chase you down and the longer it will take for me to get tired of you. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all._**  
  
“You’re such a liar.” Kylazasta said, reading something from the worn lines of Devon’s face. “That’s good. Lies mean complexity. Mean strength.”  
  
**_But you’re wrong, though. I could never get tired of you, my sweet. You know that if you came back now, I wouldn’t even be angry. I would love you just as much as I always have, and that’s all that matters._**  
  
“Does it really mean strength?” Devon wondered, asking rhetorically. “If a person hides the truth because they’re afraid of being judged? If they hide the truth not to gain an advantage, but because they can’t take a hit to their pride and to their feelings?”  
  
Kylazasta couldn’t even tell who Devon was asking. So she kept her mouth shut, like she always did in the face of uncomfortable truths and questions.  
  
And Devon put her hand on Kylazasta’s shoulder, guiding her away from the untrammeled wild (because there was nothing in the wild but the all-smothering intensity of a heartless and uncaring callousness) and back onto the well-worn trail.  
  
“Come on.” Devon said. “We’re almost there, you know. And then this will all be over for you.”  
  
**_But it will never be over for_ you _, will it?_**  
  
“Yeah.” Kylazasta said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“What for?” Devon asked, distracted by off-hand imaginations and thoughts. She could almost hear the words of the _thing_ that had worn a little girl’s face and captured her so long ago, if she thought too hard and too long.  
  
“I’m sorry for-”  
  
_I’m sorry for what happened to you,_ Kylazasta almost wanted to say. But that would have been weakness.  
  
“-being weak. I’m sorry for being weak.”  
  
“Oh, Kylazasta...” Devon sighed. “I told you, you’re not weak.”  
  
And Kylazasta shook her head.  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
“My mistake.” Devon smiled. “Kylazasta the great and terrible.”  
  
“No.” Kylazasta stopped, forcing Devon to turn and look her in the eye. “Call me Kyla.”  
  
“Kyla, huh?” Devon asked. “I imagine that’s just as non-negotiable as ‘Kylazasta the Great and Terrible,’ then?”  
  
Kyla nodded commandingly, like a lord over men.  
  
“Okay," Devon acquiesced with a chuckle. "But you have to call me Devon.”  
  
And that was that, that was their easy accord. It was far more than enough.


	7. Chapter 7

  
Miran - the City of Gold, the City of Lustre and Light! - wasn’t exactly as lovely and beautiful as it was made out to be.  
  
“I was told that the roads would be paved with diamonds.” Kylazasta snarked, kicking at the cobblestones and looking around with an inscrutable dark cast to her face. Devon smiled as she continued to watch the city-folk passing by from her position on the park bench.  
  
“This place isn’t that rich.” Devon laid out plainly. “No-one here _actually_ wastes their conjuration magic on physical wealth.”  
  
Kylazasta slumped down next to Devon, leaning into the older mage. She, too, watched the pedestrians, although from the look on her face she was obviously much more judgemental.  
  
“But _why_?”  
  
“It’s just a stupid human thing.” Devon said, chuckling as - across the road - a halfling man trying to give his half-orc girlfriend a piggyback ride. To his immense credit, he was succeeding. “The ruling class here - the people with the phenomenal physical and supernatural power - blow it all on monastic ‘enlightenment’ and religious ritual and self-flagellating nonsense.”  
  
“But why?” Kylazasta asked, her eyes tracking the debacle. “The name of the city says it’s made of gold and lustre!”  
  
“I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of spiritual metaphor.” Devon explained. “Like the souls of the people here are made of _literal_ gleaming and glittering gold. Which really undermines the message of the asceticism which is often championed here, but don’t tell _them_ that.”  
  
Kylazasta’s nostrils flared.  
  
“Fucking paladins.”  
  
“Indeed.” Devon rasped, before she dragged herself to her feet. “But we still need one of them. Only one I ever knew who could fix my massive magical fuck-ups, so don’t you dare try to piss her off in particular.”  
  
“Yeah…” Kylazasta agreed, almost mindlessly repeating the words. “Magical fuck-ups.”  
  
For a moment, she bit her lip so hard that she almost looked as if she was going to draw blood. The legacy of a youth as a lizard without lips, perhaps, or maybe it was just the outward sign of some ambiguous dissonance in her guts.  
  
“Devon?” She asked, staring at the halfling and the half-orc. “What _are_ they doing?”  
  
“They’re kissing.” Devon replied idly, as she traced the skyline, hunting down the church which the two of them were searching for. The halfling had forsaken stilts, leaving it up to the half-orc to lift him up into the air.  
  
“No, I know that.” Kylazasta shot back snappily, although she very much _didn’t_ know it. “I mean, what are they getting out of it? Are they trying to eat each other?”  
  
Devon chuckled, and sighed like inhalation was going out of style. “Mmm, you answer my question first. What did you get out of interacting with people, back while you had a dragon’s body?”  
  
“You’re not asking about what I _wanted_. You’re asking about what I _got_.”  
  
It wasn’t a question. Devon still inclined her head in agreement.  
  
“I don’t know. I got wealth, I guess. Food. There wasn’t much else, I mean… no-one was tripping over themselves to give me anything else.”  
  
“Mhm.” Devon responded.  
  
“Answer _my_ question now, you worm… I mean… _woman_... who is named Devon!”  
  
“I suppose you never really saw what people get up to when they’re not terrified, did you, Kyla?” Devon wondered rhetorically. “Their kissing is a courtship thing. A way to show romantic affection.”  
  
“How… lowbrow.” Kylazasta gagged. “No, it still looks like mutual cannibalism to me.”  
  
“I’m sure.” Devon laughed. “Come on, we have places to be.”  
  
And they did, leaving a halfling and a half-orc to their impending fling.  


===

  
Waiting in the main hall of the Church of Light was rather like the worst parts of waiting in line, waiting to see a healer, and waiting… in a church. The room was full of people with various aches and pains, people praying to the gods above, people whining to the gods above, people whining to each other, people praying to each other, and more.  
  
“Devon!” Kylazasta whispered harshly. “Everyone is looking at us!”  
  
“I know.” Devon said blandly. “That’s normal. We’re not regulars around here.”  
  
“But _why_?” Kylazasta asked. “They should mind their own business!”  
  
“Oh, they are minding their own business.” Devon confirmed. “They just think that _everything_ is their business.”  
  
One of the priests shot them a vile glare before redoubling her prayers to the gods of the sun and the moon.  
  
“Gods, these deities are so twisted.” Kylazasta muttered. “Tiamat only wants you to kill and eat people and hoard shiny things, and that’s it. Easy ticket to heaven.”  
  
Devon might have taken the moment to point out Tiamat didn’t accept humans as petitioners, but quickly thought better of it.  
  
And that snap judgement was a good thing in the end, really.  
  
It took about fifteen more minutes of bickering, under the dome of a cloistering silence spell, before a frail man - reedy in the skin and bones, with a red face and stress-greyed hair - in a cheap robe emerged from the back of the chapel to greet them.  
  
“I believe that you’re here for a meeting with Lady Tiras?” He asked in trembling, terrified tones.  
  
Kylazasta would have torn into the man for his cowardice, had Devon not put her hand over the dragon’s mouth.  
  
“Yes.” Devon said, looking bashful for the first time that Kylazasta had ever seen. “I would have arranged a formal appointment, but I… well, I understand that your order isn’t receptive to casual Sending spells and the like.”  
  
“It’s no problem.” The man returned, smiling thinly. “Our Lady of the Great Crusade is pleased to be reacquainted with an old companion. If you’d follow me-?”  
  
“Tell us who you are, first.” Kylazasta scowled. Devon opened her mouth to apologize.  
  
“Oh, I’m just her amanuensis.” He said. His eyes flicked to the side for a moment, and Kylazasta’s scowl deepened, but Devon took no heed, following along after the man into the bowels of the church through spiraling stairs and corridors, through phantasmagorical mazes of stained glass, through tortuous and torrid angles of stonework and sculpture.  
  
Kylazasta hated it. Devon did too, of course, but she had the politeness not to sneer.  
  
And then they were there, in a massive vaulting ‘office’ which was more like a hall of worship.  
  
“Please, take a seat.” The amanuensis offered silkily, taking his own position at a desk under a swooping stained-glass window which depicted a suite of angels side-by-side with surreal, sidereal, fractal clockworks. “Our Lady will be with us in just a moment.”  
  
“Of course.” Devon conceded. Kylazasta grumbled to herself, scuffing her feet on the royal red carpet.  
  
“If you don’t mind my asking, what is the girl doing here?” The amanuensis asked probingly. Devon put her hand on Kylazasta’s shoulder, squeezing in a way that was meant to be reassuring but fell flat.  
  
“She’s why I’m here. I need Tiras’ help breaking the curse which was put upon her.”  
  
“Hm.” The amanuensis said coldly, steepling his fingers. “Yes, Our Lady did often comment upon the mayhem which your own magic wrought. Have you considered finding someone… less in demand to help?”  
  
Devon shrugged. “She’s one of only a few I know who could dispel my magic, and the only one I would trust to have the discretion I seek.”  
  
“Right.” The amanuensis deadpanned. “Because Tiras was your old fling, if I understand the situation correctly?”  
  
Devon shifted in her seat, and frowned, her face growing stern.  
  
“...you’re not Annabelle’s desk lackey, are you?”  
  
“No, I’m not.” The man confirmed. “You see, Annabelle Tiras was excommunicated from our order two months ago, for her crimes and her fraternization with our enemies. If you’re looking for her, she isn’t here.”  
  
Kylazasta stiffened, leaping out of her chair to throttle the man bodily for daring to fail to live up to her expectations, but Devon grabbed her up out of the air and pulled her against her own chest.  
  
“It will be okay.” Devon hissed, seeking to avert disaster. “I have an idea of where she might be now-”  
  
“Ah, yes.” The man said, and the sheer brutal _authority_ of his voice cut all other noise down to size. “I thought you might. You see, we’re looking for Tiras too. I don’t suppose you would happen to be willing to share?”  
  
Kylazasta hissed and roared, bucking against Devon like a dragon possessed, and for a second, Devon considered doing something, anything - using a spell of sleep or silence, but that couldn’t possibly be enough to heal the emotional wreckage Kylazasta was quickly becoming - but by the time that she’d put her thoughts in order, the man was taking matters into his own hands.  
  
“Be _still_ , child.” He said, and his words were braced with the steel authority of gods and kings and lords above men. And then Kylazasta went still and silent, the only sign of her life being her own hyperventilation.  
  
“If I don’t share what I know about where Annabelle might be,” Devon asked, “what are you going to do?”  
  
The man smiled thinly, even as paladins spilled from the wings of the cavernous office where Devon and Kylazasta found themselves.  
  
“Torturing humans is forbidden, of course, but we have no such issues with you… spawn of Arcadia. And I’ll have you know that we’re willing to do quite a bit to get Tiras back. She knows just a little too much.”  
  
Devon stiffened. At any other time, the man’s cliched ranting might have seemed almost funny, like something from a fairy tale. But she took fairy tales far too seriously, and this wasn’t a time for laughter regardless.  
  
“I am no _sidhe!_ And I would die before I betray Annabelle!”  
  
“A pity.” The man said, beckoning to his side. And then the paladins leapt forward, drawing blades and cleaving through the air with swords that rent vision itself in two - pulling light in until there was nothing visible _but_ the blades, blinding against the darkness, drawing gleaming arcs of godshatter through the air.  
  
And with no other choice, not strong enough to fight, too hemmed-in to flee the normal way, Devon did something that she had long ago promised that she never _would_ do.  
  
She teleported, teleported the only way that she knew how. She wrapped herself around Kylazasta, tumbling down as if to use her body as a shield.  
  
And then time and distance fell away, ceasing to be any rigid and fixed system of dimensions and falling into a web of tangled, snaring, _relational_ things, and Devon and Kylazasta fell, and fell, and fell, and fell, their bodies breaking on metaphysical thorns and branches all the way down.  
  
And then the paladins were gone. The church was gone. Miran was gone.  
  
It was all gone, gone, gone.   


 


	8. Chapter 8

Whatever Kylazasta would remember of the events of in the church, and whatever might have happened next, it would always seem so strange to her. So warped, through the fog of rage and heartbreak. So ethereal, through the veil of adrenaline and confusion. So _unworldly_ and so… _fey_.  
  
She could barely see anything as she was, paralyzed by enchantment and in Devon’s grip. And through the gaps in Devon’s hold, she could barely see anything through the haze of thorns and barbs and daggers which stretched on for infinity in the manner of an ill dream. But still.  
  
Through the gaps in the thorns, the gaps in the hedge - she saw _things_. Castles and cities of alien grace built upon the bones of an earthen shape, gardens of delirium rooting through the skin of an unforgettable exposed vaulting plain. Overlapping mysteries woven from the fundament of action and time.  
  
Even as Devon and Kylazasta tumbled through that jagged place, it surged up around them in some indefinable way, washed about by tides of perspective and interpretation, until the coherency of space itself - in ideal and in practice - was driven unreal. The thorny hedge which encircled them might as well have been an endless ocean or a perfect void.  
  
_A transitive plane._ Kylazasta realized dimly, her mind still mired in the exotic wonder. _Like the Astral or Ethereal or Shadow._  
  
It was beautiful. It was great. It was terrible. And then it was over, as they fell through and away from that harsh and severe world of brambles.  
  
All over.  


===

  
“Listen to me, Kyla. It’s going to be okay.”  
  
“Mhm.” Kylazasta murmured blankly as Devon tended to her wounds - a handful of light scratches left by the thorns of the hedge. Even though they were mere cuts - no more harmful than getting grazed by parchment - they still wept blood and tears and the taste of lethe as if they reached down into Kylazasta’s bones and soul.  
  
Devon herself, who had used her body as a shield - was by far worse, her clothing ragged and her boots pooling with her own bloody ichor.  
  
Together, the two of them were stranded far beyond the walls of Miran, carried by the waves of relativity of that fey hedge.  
  
“I think I have an idea where Annabelle might be.” Devon said weakly. “We can go and find her. This is just a, just a detour.”  
  
“Mhm.” Kylazasta continued as Devon finished cleaning the cuts.  
  
“Kyla, you’re worrying me.”  
  
The polymorphed dragon seemed to weigh something in her mind, before she just… dropped it. Dropped everything.  
  
“Fuck this.”  
  
Devon couldn’t say anything, because there was nothing _to_ be said.  
  
“Fuck this, and fuck you. Just… stop. We’re never going to find this paladin, are we?”  
  
Devon looked every bit her age, as a woman who didn’t know how old she was anymore, and as a woman who would have forgotten how old she was even if she did know anyways.  
  
“We might.” She whispered.  
  
“But why did we need to find this paladin, anyways?” Kylazasta asked.  
  
“I… I tried to fix one of my polymorphs, once.” Devon said wistfully, bitterly. “But the magic… it just forgets. Everything forgets. Annabelle was one of the only ones I knew who could make things remember what they used to be.”  
  
Kylazasta scoffed with disbelief, her nostrils flaring with her own self-righteous rage. “And what do you get out of it?”  
  
“Get out of what?”  
  
“Get out of helping me!” Kylazasta screamed. “I know you’re fucking _soft_ enough to try to help me because you’re just that _nice_ , but you can’t - you can’t - I can’t fucking _tell!_ ”  
  
She stood up, practically trying to push Devon over like a brawler, but she failed, as both of them expected.  
  
“You’re just trying to help me because I remind you of you! It’s… it’s just your own displaced narcissism!”  
  
“You’re right.” Devon said softly… ripping all the air out of Kylazasta’s sails, leaving her jaw dropped. “I did start caring about you just because you reminded me of myself. And maybe that was just projection, trying to give you what I never had.  
  
“But I also care because I feel guilty, because I want to morally exculpate myself for what I did to you. And more than that, I care because I think you’re a dragon worth caring about.”  
  
“Bulette shit.” Kylazasta spat. “Humans don’t care about dragons. Even _dragons_ don’t care about dragons.”  
  
Something seemed to die in Devon’s eyes, the abandonment of a comfortable lie.  
  
“But I’m not human.” Devon said. “I was born human, but you just saw that place I used to teleport us. That was the place where I was taken and changed. I’m… I’m fey.”  
  
“Once a human, always a human.” Kylazasta seethed. Perhaps she wanted to believe that she was still a dragon - _once a dragon, always a dragon_. “You still think just like all the other humans!”  
  
“But I _don’t_ , and you said as much yourself.” Devon replied, and to her own surprise, she was _crying_. Crying over the admission of her inhumanity, or crying because she just _cared_ too damn much. “I care about you, and that’s something that ordinary humans wouldn’t do. Because I’m not ordinary, and I’m not human.”  
  
Kylazasta was pacing now, and for a second she thought that she might learn to breathe fire again.  
  
“No. Fuck you! I hate you!”  
  
“No you don’t.” Devon whispered.  
  
“Yes I _do!_ Why won’t you listen! Why can’t you just feel as awful as I do!”  
  
“I’ve cried enough tears for a lifetime.” Devon said.  
  
“Why can’t you just _hate me!?_ ” Kylazasta screamed. A murder of crows shrieked overhead, terrified by the roaring, rising argument.  
  
“Why do you want me to hate you?” Devon asked.  
  
“Because it’s fucking _simple_!” Kylazasta wailed, and too late, Devon realized that the dragon was crying too. “I don’t have to worry about _backstabbing_ , and _lies_ , an-and _betrayal_ , and, and-”  
  
Weeks or months of built-up twisted-up feelings (whether they were draconic emotions or human emotions was hard to say) spilled out in moments, and Kylazasta just couldn’t even hold herself up anymore.  
  
So she fell to her knees - against Devon - and cried, and cried, and cried for a life she would never have, and a life that she didn’t know if she wanted, and a life that she didn’t know if she needed. Because she was just a shadow of herself, shaped by indecision and ideals at cross-purposes and her own damn shame complexes.  
  
“I don’t want you to betray me.” Kylazasta whispered. “And I hate that I feel this way. I hate what you’ve done to me, I hate that I want to be complacent with this.”  
  
And Devon, still crying, pulled Kylazasta into her arms. For once, Kylazasta thought that she might just be okay with being small - and she hated that, too.  
  
“It’s going to be okay.” Devon rasped, perhaps trying to convince herself just as much as she was trying to convince Kylazasta. “And I won’t betray you. I promise that. I give you my word as a human, my word… as a fey. And that’s something that you know I can never go back on.”  
  
And somehow, Devon didn’t even want to go back on that promise.  
  
Already, they had lingered too long in this place, at the outskirts of Miran, where the paladins blessed by their own idealism were going to be hunting them down. Already, they’d lingered too long in this place where Devon had cut the pathway through the hedge of faerie, where they might have attracted the wrong kinds of attention.  
  
So Devon whispered reassurances into Kylazasta's ears even as she whispered into the wind, confabulating wings of void and air to whisk them away.  
  
“I won’t betray you, Kyla.” Devon repeated. “It’s going to be okay. It really, really will be okay. I promise that, too.”  


===

  
In a space between spaces, in a place between places, in a royal court of roots and webs and silver tracing, an un-being sat on an un-throne of broken glass and mirage. Clad in the morning mist before the dawn and with skin like empty ashen cliffs, with a frame like shattered but proud willow wood, she moved with the weight of the ages.  
  
Ironic, perhaps, because she seemed the epitome of youth, youthful beyond words, like a prepubescent child playing pretend to the throne of the queen. She moved for the first time in living memory - because in that place between places, memory was a fragile thing - raising a hand to brush away a lock of hair like bark and rosewood and reveal eyes-that-weren’t-eyes.  
  
And her court started on the spot, a court of creatures baleful and alien and weird and bizarre and foreign. One creature - with blood veins that twisted and forked from the skin into hemolymph horns - raised it’s head to meet the un-being’s not-eyes.  
  
“My fair lady Titania?”  
  
And the un-being spoke, peeling back lips to reveal worthless diamond teeth and tongue, and reveal a voice which echoed as if from the bottom of some bottomless well.  
  
**_“It’s nothing… just, perhaps, I dreamed of reclaiming an old mortal of mine sometime soon…”_**  
  
The creature with the blue-blood horns grinned, it’s mouths an uncountable cascade of chasms, and a warbling murmur erupted from the crowd of the court, a cacophony of hooting and hollering and inscrutable piping.  
  
“Our great and terrible queen awakens! Our great and terrible queen awakens! Our great and terrible queen awakens!”  
  
The un-being, Queen Titania, stood up from her throne of slumber, her youthful body molting and flaking with every step as if it were some ancient cocoon.  
  
And Titania spoke to the one with the blue-blood horns, her face splitting into a wide and infatuated smile for the first time since the ashen mist of her weft dress was first forged.  
  
**_“And I think, perhaps, I might just have a job for you, my Oberon.”_**


	9. Chapter 9

Kylazasta, to her own consternation, found herself waking up in Devon’s arms. That was bad for more than a few reasons.  
  
First and foremost, it meant that she’d _fallen asleep_ to begin with. She hadn’t tried to fall asleep. Dragons didn’t ‘fall’ asleep, because they could fly and didn’t fall at all, and because they had control. They _went_ to sleep exactly when they wanted to, no sooner and no later..  
  
Secondly, and following from the first… it meant that she’d lost track of her surroundings. Her compulsive need for control (and thus, situational awareness) was having a fit. But then, her ability to assert control had fallen by miles ever since her unfortunate transformation, and it had only gone down ever since as she’d slowly (and against her will) learned how to find miniscule, occasional, modicums of happiness even without control. And she couldn’t stuff the genie back into the bottle - now that she wondered if maybe, somehow, some way, she _could_ be happy without power, she couldn’t just _forget_ that remote and dwindling possibility.  
  
And she hated that she couldn’t forget it.  
  
Finally… being a small little female thing in the grip of a larger being, well… the obvious parallels to the (several) times when she’d kidnapped princesses did _not_ escape her. Stupid dramatic irony, stupid comeuppances.  
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid.  
  
But then, she _was_ stupid so it was okay, in the end, wasn’t it? She was… just a stupid human. Just… a human.  
  
And it all seemed so _empty_.  


===

  
Devon, to her great consternation, didn’t realize that Kylazasta was already awake until she was setting the polymorphed dragon down upon a the grass and begun setting up wards and seals of magic.  
  
“Hey.” She whispered, her breath shortened by the chill of the night air. “Are you feeling better?”  
  
“Yes.” Kylazasta replied. Lying, of course, if the desolate look in her eyes was any indication, but Devon didn’t push it. Because she didn’t know how, how to make it up or how to make things okay.  
  
The stars overhead were practically scraping against the sky as they soared around the sky, needle-points of broken glass through the black.  
  
One might have almost tried to take cover, but there was nowhere _to_ take cover in the vacant sands and dusts where Devon and Kylazasta had found themselves. Nothing but dunes for miles and miles and miles.  
  
They’d flown a long way from that city of paladins, come a long way from that lonely cave where Kylazasta had once tried to be a monster.  
  
Kylazasta was quiet up until Devon was finished chanting, and even afterwards, as Devon pulled up a surface of _something_ for them to sleep on, separated from the sands.  
  
Kylazasta spent a long time just… staring at her hands. It was amazing how much they seemed like they were _hers_ now, amazing how hard it was to dissociate herself from them.  
  
“What did you do?” Kylazasta eventually asked the older woman.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“What is it like… to act like a human even when you’re not human?”  
  
Her voice was plaintive, raw, tired. And Devon couldn’t bring herself to look at anything but the glass in the skies.  
  
“Sometimes…” Devon whispered. “Sometimes I would look at people, and find myself thinking of the best ways to _use_ them as mere tools. I’d forget how to empathize with them like I could before I was changed.”  
  
Some remote and far-away part of Devon _knew_ that she thought that way about children, too, just as Titania had before her, and just as Titania had made her think. Some further-remote and further-away part wondered if that was why she had looked after Kylazasta - not out of compassion for a living creature, but out of covetousness for a toy.  
  
But she ignored those parts of herself, because some demons - like Hope, that deeply disappointing delusion - were best left locked inside Pandora’s Box.  
  
She wasn’t like Titania. She wasn’t. She had to believe that, and had to _remind_ herself of it, even though it should have been obvious (for Titania felt neither guilt nor shame) because she still felt Titania’s caress all these many years later.  
  
“And why don’t you give into those feelings?” Kylazasta asked. “Why don’t you use people?”  
  
“Some of it is out of spite at the one who changed me.” Devon continued. “Some of it is just my own weak moralizing. Because I don’t want to want to use people, because it all feels so _wrong_.”  
  
Kylazasta sniffed. “It… what I want feels wrong too.”  
  
“So you have to make a choice.” Devon replied, in the manner of one who had thought about it for far too long. “You have to decide what feelings you honor.”  
  
And Kylazasta continued sniffling. “Sometimes I feel things that I don’t want to feel. Sometimes my emotions get so intense and impossible to understand that I have to scream and cry and numb myself in order to get by.”  
  
Devon nodded, all too familiar with the way your own heart could betray you.  
  
And Kylazasta bit her lip.  
  
“Was there anything that you always wanted to do as a human, that you were able to do even as a fey?”  
  
“I fell in love.” Devon mused. “I saw the world, and I still haven’t seen it all. I made a difference to a lot of people, on some level. I made my parents proud of me.”  
  
_Even if it wasn’t truly_ me _who made them proud of me._  
  
“Is there anything that you wanted to do as a dragon?” Devon asked, returning the question.  
  
And Kylazasta could have given the obvious answer - that she wanted to have ultimate power over lesser beings, or possess ultimate wealth. But instead, she considered something else, considered voicing a desire that she hated having. She had never been strong enough to do it herself, no matter how much her stupid and weak heart ached for it, which made her just want to forget it and be complacent with the unfairness that made her want to scream.  
  
“Even if I can’t be a dragon again, then could you… would you still help me?”  
  
“Of course.” Devon said.  
  
“I…” Kylazasta swallowed, her eyes fluttering with ever-unshed tears. “I want to kill my sister.”


	10. Chapter 10

It took forty minutes for Kylazasta to elaborate, but Devon didn’t pressure her. She just wrapped an arm around the dragon’s shoulders, and waited for things to be okay.

 

Sometimes doing nothing _was_ a solution. Sometimes.

 

“She… she screwed me up.” Kylazasta muttered. “She _ruined_ me. I remember when I was just a hatchling of a clawful of years, I loved her so much. And even _that_ should have been enough to make me a wreck, because I wasn’t supposed to have someone to love. That’s not what my instincts needed, to make me consistent and confident and stable as a red dragon, but it’s what I got. She took care of me, of us.”

 

The shallow, thin quaver as Kylazasta lent voice to the ‘us’ didn’t escape Devon’s notice.

 

“It wasn’t until I was twenty-five or so that I realized that things were wrong. When I realized that chromatic dragons didn’t take care of each other. And I thought that maybe losing our parents had put something into my sister, my dear older sister, maybe it had changed her and changed us _through_ her.”

 

 _But I was wrong_ went unsaid between them.

 

“I was forty years old, maybe, when we were attacked by a band of roving do-gooder murderers. She… used her magic, I suppose. And I expected her to to use it protect us, like the maternal figure she tried to be. Instead, she used her magic to make one of our younger brothers into bait, and she dragged me and my younger sister along in her escape. Disillusioning. Disappointing. Inevitable.”

 

“I’m sorry.” Devon said.

 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Kylazasta replied slowly, haltingly, completely deflecting the emotional comfort that Devon was trying to offer. Because it was easier to pretend that everything was okay than to face pain - willful ignorance was less of a ‘human thing’ than Kylazasta would ever willingly admit. “I don’t know what she really wanted from us, from me and my brother. Because obviously she didn’t _really_ want to care about us, to care for us. I figure that she wanted adoration, and once the illusion of her perfection was shattered, and she couldn’t get that anymore, she started looking for a different game.”

 

She curled a lock of red hair around one finger, looking (too) human. “I was 53 years old or so when she kicked me out of her lair. And I don’t remember how old I was when she started demanding tribute from me, but I remember that she never ever stopped. I remember that she ate my younger sister alive when she didn’t even have enough to give up as her tithe.”

 

_“I don’t have my wealth with me, but I know where to get it. I know who has it right now-”_

 

“The shadow conjuration.” Devon murmured. “The illusion of the wealth that you created in your old lair. That was for your older sister?”

 

“No.” Kylazasta said. “It was for me.”

 

Some last vestige of self-restraint fell away, and Devon flipped Kylazasta around, hugging her so tightly that a universal solvent couldn't have separated them.

 

“You deserved better.” Devon whispered into Kylazasta’s ear.

 

“Doesn’t everyone?” Kylazasta asked bitterly. “There’s no limit to how much you can want, and no limit on how much you can have - with all the magic in the world - so why should it ever stop? How can anyone ever get exactly what they deserve? What do you even think I deserve?”

 

“You deserve _better_.” Devon insisted.

 

“Do I?” Kylazasta muttered. “I’m not even a normal red dragon. If I got what I deserved, growing up, if I got what I wanted, then I wouldn’t be so soft even as a human. I didn’t even try to slit your throat, that first night, when I still thought you were just a sorceror. Instead I let circumstance bow me into cooperation.”

 

She sagged, turning her face into Devon’s neck.

 

“There’s more than one way to be a dragon, Kyla.”

 

“Maybe.” Kylazasta replied. “But maybe there’s more than one way to be a human, too.”

 

===

 

It took another hour for Kylazasta to open her mouth again.

 

“I don’t even remember the names of my younger siblings anymore. I cared about them, too, once upon a time.”

 

Devon hugged Kylazasta tighter.

 

“I forgot my _own_ name, once. But there are always ways to find lost and forgotten things.”

 

Kylazasta pulled away minutely, as her shoulders began to shake. “I’m not even sure I want to remember them.”

 

“Hey.” Devon whispered. “That’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

 

Kylazasta’s sleep was restless, perforated by dreams of betrayal on crimson wings (Her wings? The wings of her sister, Oizys? Wings of fire?) and dreams of thorny nooses. Disillusioning, disappointing, and inevitable all at once.

 

“Devon?” She asked quietly, motionless as she struggled with the grip of slumber. “I think I might just give up on getting my old body back.”

 

It was settling for less, perhaps. And both of them hated it, but even with all the magic in the world you couldn’t always make the stars align.

 

“But do you think anyone could everyone could ever love me?” The dragon continued.

 

“Of course.” Devon said with a surety that was felt on principle, rather than on evidence.

 

“I was a failure as a dragon and now I’m a failure as a human, too.”

 

“You’re not a failure.” Devon insisted, receiving no response.

 

“Yes I am.”

 

“Now listen to me, Kyla!” Devon hissed, pulling just far enough away to look her in the eyes. “You are _not_ a failure. And even if you were, that wouldn’t mean anything about how lovable you are.”

 

Kyla snorted.

 

“Forget it. Just forget it.”

 

“I won’t forget it.” Devon replied. Kylazasta shook her head.

 

“But _I_ will.” Kylazasta murmured. “I’d still rather be a failure of a dragon as compared to a failure as a human.”

 

“You’re not a failure.” Devon maintained. “Who did you fail?”

 

“I’m a failure to Tiamat, maybe.” Kylazasta murmured. “But I’m a failure to myself, too. Just myself. No-one else. There was never anyone else. Never never never. Not really.”

 

She found herself dragged back beneath into sleep before she could even blink, lulled into the soothing darkness by Devon’s empty and impossible but well-meaning promises.


	11. Chapter 11

It was nearly midday, although it felt like the same temperature as always. Wreathed beneath enchantments and abjurations, Kylazasta and Devon were protected. Were  _ soft _ , were  _ weak _ .

 

Weakness was a luxury that Kylazasta was currently forced to afford. It was strange, the paradoxicality of it all. As a dragon, she had wanted to be strong, because she needed to survive and because the will to power screamed in her veins. And as much as she might have wanted to not  _ need _ that power to survive, she still needed it.

 

And even now, with everything out of her hands - with her very survival guaranteed by a woman that Kylazasta wasn’t supposed to trust, she still screamed for power. She needed to be strong to get what she wanted, because… because… because she shouldn’t trust Devon.

 

_ And why shouldn’t I trust her?  _ She wondered.

 

_ Because she’s probably just like Oizys. _ She knew. Kylazasta couldn’t trust anyone but herself, and that was the root of her own libertine vices and neurotic issues.

 

And that probably wasn’t an uncommon attitude, for a chromatic dragon to have. But… with an evil sister to point to, that made Kylazasta feel like there was a cause beyond her own draconic nature. And her own spite made her want to go against her sister at every turn, even in emotional ways.

 

“Hey, Devon?” Kylazasta asked, the words slipping from her lips like they were teeth, ripped from her gums. “How do humans become powerful? How do humans live forever?”

 

And Devon smiled. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me that question.”

 

She went quiet for a moment, her footsteps seeming hard against the soft gravel beneath their feet. All around them, all around the path, grey dirt and ash was spotted with brown mottled rock like the snowless mountains far away in the distance. Withered trees made up the skeleton of a forest, with flesh of broken and darkened leaves.

 

“Lots of ways.” Devon elaborated. “But I suspect that where you want to go from here depends on what you want to do about your sister.”

 

“Well, I want her dead.” Kylazasta replied.

 

“I know that.” Devon chuckled. “But how are we going to have to approach this? Is she a lone wolf? An empress? What?”

 

Kylazasta shrugged, and looking at Devon, it felt like a constant negotiation. Who was she? Who were they? What was she, what were they?

 

“I don’t even know, in truth.” Kylazasta said. “Something to fix, perhaps.”

 

Devon inclined her head. And meanwhile, Kylazasta was thinking harder than she’d ever thought.

 

Perhaps if humans could be strong, too… Then accepting this would be for the best. She couldn’t can’t be strong as a dragon anymore. Couldn’t even scheme properly. Couldn’t think like a dragon properly. So the best she could do was be strong as a human.

 

And yeah, she could have been  _ weak _ as a human, if she wanted to. And she never had been good at scheming and thinking like a dragon. But she had to maintain… distance? Maintain an illusion?

 

Had to stay  _ comfortable _ . Not physically comfortable, because that was obviously weakness - but emotionally comfortable.

 

_ You know that’s a kind of weakness all it’s own _ , she reminded herself.

 

_ I know _ , she replied, as if there was a real dialogue at work.  _ I know. _

 

“Why are you bothering with enchantment?” Kylazasta asked somewhat spitefully, tottering over the gravel and dirt and beneath the gaze of the sun, practically dissecting her. Exposing her. Making her feel judged, vulnerable. “I thought you hated using your magic.”

 

“It has it’s uses.” Devon replied. “And it’s stable enough, at least in certain respects.”

 

“That’s not what I asked, human.” Kylazasta muttered, hissing as a bit of rock got into her sandals. “Why bother with magic when a mundane solution would work just as well? You know you’re playing with fire.”

 

Devon turned around, opened her mouth to reply, and nearly tripped over a slab of stone forgotten by time underneath the gravel path, letting out a little yelp in place of an explanation. And as surprise dribbled through her veins, Kylazasta reached forward, grabbing Devon by the hem of her coat, and pulling her back before she fell and broke something in a spat of shattering bone and spilled blood.

 

“Ah, jeez, thanks.” Devon said bashfully, turning back to the younger girl. “Could have gotten hurt, there.”

 

Kylazasta nodded snappily, turning down to the hand that shouldn’t have been so strong. “Yeah.”

 

Devon looked at Kylazasta carefully, scrutinizingly. At the dress that Kylazasta was wearing - not just chosen by the young polymorphed dragon, but picked out by Devon herself. It wouldn’t have been an issue, not with spells to endure the elements, but those spells shouldn’t have been necessary to begin with.

 

_ Why did I give her that? _ Devon wondered, her face going pale.  _ Because she wanted it? It wasn’t like she had even been willing to admit that she wanted it, anyways. _

 

Once upon a time, Titania had dressed Devon up too.

 

**_You know you’re just like me, love. Come back, because you can never be happy again as you are._ **

 

“Hey, mage? Are you alright?” Kylazasta asked, trampling her feet into the gravel. Devon gasped, shocked out of her own dark thoughts.

 

“Yes. I… I’m fine.” Devon said, mulling herself over in her mind. She didn’t like what she found - but then, that was typical. No one ever liked everything they saw in themselves.

 

Like waves on the horizon, a distant town crawled closer as Devon and Kylazasta continued walking. And like waves on the horizon, Devon and Kylazasta seemed doomed to crash and collapse against some distant shore.


End file.
